


Distorted Lens

by carvedwhalebones (fuckyeahlucifersupernatural)



Category: Dishonored (Video Game), Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Dishonored 2, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 15:54:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8673397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckyeahlucifersupernatural/pseuds/carvedwhalebones
Summary: Kirin is brought to the Dreadful Wale and the strange places in-between.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt:** _Please write something about bringing Kirin to the Dreadfull Whale! I really wanted to do that too._
> 
> **Tumblr URL:** carvedwhalebones.tumblr.com

Kirin is counting — heart puttering out the seconds — how long his machine has been active on himself. It has reached _twenty seconds_ over the time he keeps Sokolov sizzling in his seat. Blood is boiling in his ears, drowning out the inhuman howl leaving him. He knows what comes after — has seen it with the random mill of test subjects he strapped into the chair. The inventor is at a panicked loss of how to stop this. He can’t even use his tongue to formulate words, the muscle useless in his mouth. 

_Thirty seconds over._

Every bone in his damn body is humming — rattling like those bone charms he bought from one of his staff members. He broke her apart, the next day after, to determine if heretical items change the internal structure of the body. Oh, how Breanna and Delilah advised he not bother with his questions of The Void or dabble with heretical items he cannot understand. It felt like a challenge and how can he not hold the carved bones to his ear, hoping to learn from a forgotten language spoken through calcium and collagen? 

_Forty seconds over._

He’s both rising from the chair and clinging onto the armrests, manicured nails clawing at polished wood. His eyes feel like they’re ready to burst out from his sockets, squeezing his eyes shut.

Just like that, it's gone. All of it. 

_“S-s-st-st-“_ He’s trying to mouth a word with a trembling chin, caught in a sensory whiplash when the heat piercing his skull dissipates. 

A chill replaces the heat, washing over his eyelids and spilling over his frame. The crackle of electricity is gone. The bubbling of blood in his ears ebbs into the sound of water lapping against something close to him. Is he near the shoreline? The cliffside? The idea this is nothing but a poor dream has him giving a croaked sound meant to be laughter. He opens his eyes to test the theory, awaiting to find himself in his laboratory. It, too, is gone. 

He’s floating through a backdrop of dark nothingness. Hovering in a space surrounded by darkened rocks and…lens? Circular lens float listlessly beside him, varying in size and thickness. 

The surreality stuns him, watching himself and the lens bob by, caught in an invisible current. The sound of water — _waves_ — is somewhere to his left, but he can’t see any inklings of water. With the farce of safety creeping through each unseen crash of a wave, his bafflement turns to curiosity. 

This must be The Void, something smug creeping on his features that he managed to tap into the place. Or find it…or it finding him. The latter sends a spike of panic down his spine, unwilling to toy with the thought that the chair may have led to different outcome. Instead, he boldly reaches out to touch one of the lens. It’s heavy and light in all the right places — absolutely his work, noting the fine craftsmanship amongst the gold rim surrounding the glass.

Jindosh takes another to compare, aching for pen and parchment to take note. The other is far thicker and…becoming more opaque, strangely enough. Jindosh squints through the lens, marveling at the fog casting itself across the glass. It’s only when it grows in his hand does he pull aside, attempting to twist his body to observe if the other lens have done the same. 

They are. They’re expanding, magnifying the image of the other until he’s in a maze of lens. 

Jindosh marvels at it, giving a hum in approval when he watches one of his cameras twist itself from the glass, forming itself before him. He tuts with encouragement when the pewter plate is presented, unseen hands maneuvering a camera far larger than a rail cart. Pewter plates were from one of his older models, smiling with familiarity at the Saggunto asphalt being thinly coated across the plate. Jindosh can’t help but wonder if The Void is nothing but a creative space for the mind. Does perception fuel the place? Jindosh wonders how he could measure such a thing.

The camera is adjusted and Jindosh can spy an image through the viewfinder, urging himself to move closer to make it out. Strangely enough it’s himself — younger, however. He still has his fingers, he sees. This must have been during the Academy, noting the embarrassing cowlick of his. 

The lens adjust and the image goes blurred, Jindosh giving a huff in dismay. 

The lens readjust and the image presented is different. He's older, his forefinger and thumb gone, bent over an outline of what looks like one of his renditions of the arc pylon. The image goes blurred. 

It dawns upon him, through slideshows of himself and events, that he’s losing something. He can’t return to the image. There is a haze that cloaks numbers and a blanket that falls over the words from mentors, professors, bystanders, unruly heretics until they are undecipherable 

He must be alive. He’s not dead. He’s just — 

“Fuck.”

A softly, exhaled word of mortification that incites invisible fingers to claw into his skull, wedging their way into tender temples. The comforting chill is replaced with the jagged edge of pain. He can smell the scent of charred flesh coupled with something like peppermint. Jindosh gives one last struggle — twisting and flailing in an attempt the hands will release him. The hands return by shaking him. 

They shake. They shake him again. They shake harder.

“Wake up. You’re going to alert all of Serkonos if you keep that racket up,” a voice bites through The Void, the glass camera giving an audible crack. It breaks the spell, Jindosh falling through the hovering lens and rocks, eyes flying open when his back hits bottom. A one-eyed woman greets him with a sneer, startling him. 

He wants to ask where he is — _if he’s awake_ , but there are cotton balls expanding in his throat and the sides of his skull ring out with pain. He gives a choking sound, fingers shakily touching the side of his head. His fingers jerk back as if shocked, the flesh raw, but slick with either sweat, blood, or something else entirely. 

The woman huffs and pushes something closer to him with a foot, the scraping against the floorboards jarring to his ears. Jindosh turns down to find a bucket with some liquid sloshing in it. As much as he prays it’s water, even through his exhaustion, he can’t help but summon a sneer over how the water is being served to him.

“Sorry, left my porcelain cups in my other ship,” the woman comments dryly.

Kirin gives a daring look, but when the woman takes a step forward, he’s quick to avert his eyes. Grabbing at the bucket, he tips it into his mouth, gulping down the tepid water with fervor. He doesn’t want to think about how his lower lip is touching the rim of the filthy thing.

Jindosh’s throat and stomach start to ache at the greedy gulps, but he drinks his fill. He makes a good show of being unsatisfied, but takes care to not make eye contact with the woman as he does so.

He can’t make sense of this. 

With his poor man’s liquid courage in his gut, he opens his mouth, “Why am I here? Are you one of…” One of what? Jindosh frowns, the gesture pulling at the tender skin on his skull, leading him to give out a whimper. His fingers move to touch it — 

“Don’t touch it.” 

He can’t remember. His mind attempts to help him out, conjuring up images of familiar clothing, a sort of rancorous calling sound, and… Jindosh makes a movement with his hand, attempting to physically transfer the images, but struggling as to how. He needs to go further back. Where was he this morning? He…

Piero created a lock in the shape of a snowflake, the key…the key could be shifted for convenience and it… That wasn’t this morning. That was far before. _Years!_ An irritated sound rises into his throat, a hand curling into his fist, noticing something missing on his left hand. A pipe. A pipe! Yes! Jindosh forces himself to think of what it is made of because he _has_ to know that. He made it. Yes, he’s certain of it. That’s hardly a difficult question. What is your fingers made out of? 

Jindosh can only think of porcelain tea cups with water being poured into them and gaps. Massive gaps like sinkholes nestled inside each cup, arising out of nowhere and dragging all down into oblivion. Something is gone.

“I’m starting to see why the Royal Protector decided to drag you here,” she remarks, after a drawn out pause, her lips ticking upward in a thin-lipped smile, “You have a bucket of water and a bucket to shit in. Let me know when you confuse one for the other.”

**Author's Note:**

> _Love it? Hate it? Tell me in a review!_


End file.
